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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7495839" data-attributes="member: 5142">Okay. I have been in two major gaming groups, both composed of good friends who can trust each other. One set while I was in America and another here in Austria. I have GMed and been a player alike. The snags in the games of 5E occurred at around the same places. Group USA: We had previously played through the entirety of Rise of the Runelords using Pathfinder. Afterwards, we switched to 5e D&D in early 2015, not long after discussing the new edition and finishing our previous campaign. The game stopped at around 5-6th level when the GM burned out. The game was lighter and easier than PF1, both to GM and play, which made it easy to teach and run. But the game slowed down at around this time, and a lot of the enthusiasm for continuing just dive-bombed. However, in late 2015, we all split to different corners of the US while I went to Europe. (Education/career related reasons.) So we have never really had follow-ups regarding why things died around this level. Group Euro 1: This was a comparatively short-lived one, composed of my flatmates and friends from my first year here in Vienna. The first day I moved in, this group began a campaign that I joined. I had asked why they played Pathfinder over D&D 5E. They preferred having greater player-facing options and system mastery of PF over what they felt was a lack of customization options for their characters in 5E. This group in general though preferred rules heavy. Group Euro 2: This has been my main group for the past few years, made up of my partner and some of our closest friends here. This group, in contrast, hates rules heavy systems. Rules lite is preferred because they don't have time to learn or re-learn systems. Most of the group spoke ill of their prior experiences with Der Schwarze Auge and were mixed about 7th Sea 1e, though an ex-GM flavored their experiences with the latter. They had the most experience with these two systems. Almost all the players, including myself, lean rules-lite to medium-lite. We played several games of various sizes of D&D 5E over the past few years. But the games rarely, if ever, extended past 8th level before everyone collectively loses their steam. We have started at 1st level and tried starting at 3rd level. We even ran a handful of one-shots at much higher level (15-18), but even then, it was not that fun for us. Magic kinda becomes a fix-all solution, and the PCs too safe. Advantage/disadvantage is easy, but boring. And no one else really wanted to put in the effort of adjusting the dials and knobs in the DMG as most are fairly casual players. Several other people proposed GMing, myself included, but several of us wondered whether D&D 5E is even an appropriate system for the setting ideas. The GM and her partner prefer more lethality (or the feeling thereof) and felt that 5e is too forgiving. The primary GM and I also felt that the monsters were boring sacks of hit points as written that got monotonous and repetitive to run in encounters. They are gravitating now towards Warhammer RPG. (I believe 2nd edition?) But they are looking and experimenting with other systems. I also ran a one-shot of Index Card RPG in a sci-fi setting and Jade Punk (Fate), which they also found to their liking. But in the mean time, they are slowly working on their own system. Don't know if it will be for the group's liking, but it will be for the GM and her partner at least. The other set of players in this group have their own issues with D&D and D&D 5E. They felt that 5e is too rules heavy for their liking. My partner feels like the cleric (and healing magic) trivializes their medical career as a surgical nurse. Most dislike how classes and levels are structured. On the whole, they also dislike having to level up to play the character they want to actually play. And D&Disms such as the split between arcane and divine magic. Some find the D&D style fantasy kinda stale. One told me that she prefers science fantasy or just something other than the usual quasi-medieval flair. As such, several want to go back to Numenera, especially now that Numenera 2 is out and it de-emphasizes combat for more exploration and community-building. Some of those same players also prefer playing Fate because they believe there is more flexibility in the narrative, player-empowerment, and character creation. There were brief talks of trying to replay Titansgrave (Fantasy Age), but that system has its own set of major problems. So right now our group is basically between games. We want to game, but are mostly trying to figure out what to play. We just know that 5e will probably not be that game for the foreseeable future.Edit: Apparently I submitted before finishing an explanation or maybe I accidentally cut it out.</blockquote>

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